According to Nikkei, over 50 concerts Ayu played to 231,000 fans. I'm sure those aren't all unique visitors, but it's pretty clear that if she puts on a concert, people are going to see it! She's third among female soloists after Amuro Namie and Mizuki Nana.

A Nation was apparently the second-highest grossing festival of the year with 188,000 attendees over 4 days.

Imagine all the albums and goods she sells at those venues to all those people on top of ticket revenue. No wonder it's all concerts all the time. It's safe to say that her salary must still be pretty darn impressive. ^_^

Her voice may not be on the best state but the emotions she convey on stage is something that goes beyond that.
PS. Ayu is the third most succesful female act of the year tour-wise and some people say she's over and should retire.

The Nikkei overview is compiling all performance dates while counting together the full capacity of the venues played, not the actual capacity used and tickets sold.
They even mention in the first article that they just assume all the performances as sold out for the report.
So you should take it with a grain of salt.

^ With a grain of salt, true, but that applies to all artists on the list. The fact that female soloists are not doing so great is kind of sad... nothing new, though. Still, I'm proud she is high there

The Nikkei overview is compiling all performance dates while counting together the full capacity of the venues played, not the actual capacity used and tickets sold.
They even mention in the first article that they just assume all the performances as sold out for the report.
So you should take it with a grain of salt.

I'm kinda surprised with Kana Nishino being so close to ayu, and Namie aside they're all really similar. Seems like the fandom for female soloists in Japan is basically the same for them all... Not in a sad way, just peculiar, I guess

I think ayu usually sells out over 90-95% of the tickets. I have never seen a significant number of empty seats, plus you can never be sure whether some of those were actually sold, but people didn’t make it.

Also the self proclaimed “queen of live” doesn’t appear to be in top 50?

Yeah, she's not, she did a fc tour in the beginning of the year and then a hall tour. ayu did concerts on bigger places. So it makes sense she's not there. But don't worry, she's added extra dates to her tour and did her first CDL last year, things are good. We appreciate you having so much to care about her career!

If you're refering to Corvina's post, she made an actual interesting point? She didn't aim that for ayu, btw, she didn't even mention ayu. It just points to every artist in the list, especially those that toured on domes (which sometimes have part of their seats not being sold cause from some places you can't see the concert stage, so Nikkei is adding up more seats for it). Plus "take it with a grain of salt" is not "that's fake news" lol

The Nikkei overview is compiling all performance dates while counting together the full capacity of the venues played, not the actual capacity used and tickets sold.
They even mention in the first article that they just assume all the performances as sold out for the report.
So you should take it with a grain of salt.

Thank you Corvina! My bad, I should have read that part more carefully. I saw "douin" and just got excited and posted after checking the numbers.

If you're refering to Corvina's post, she made an actual interesting point? She didn't aim that for ayu, btw, she didn't even mention ayu. It just points to every artist in the list, especially those that toured on domes (which sometimes have part of their seats not being sold cause from some places you can't see the concert stage, so Nikkei is adding up more seats for it). Plus "take it with a grain of salt" is not "that's fake news" lol

Lol, I was talking about the whole list and about nobody in paticular.

But now I just take a look at Ayu's number and count the capacity of all those 50 dates of her 3 tours last year together, out of curiosity:
16 for Just the Beginning in 2018
11 for Power of Music
23 for TROUBLE Tour.
I come to 190k, not 231k.
Honestly don't know where the other 40k are coming from?
And even those 190k are with full capacity and we know for sure that Ayu didn't use the full capacity for her Power of Music arena tour last year (like for the Osaka Jo Hall dates 8000 instead of the possible 16k per date).
Taking Ayu as example here as it's the easiest and that's what you all are the most interested in.

That's why I said take it with a grain of salt.
A list with the real stats would probably look a lot different for a lot of artists, for the better or the worse.
The list like it is is horribly inflated.
No bad intention, just pointing out.